We picked up our rental car from the train station. After a few hiccups with the English-speaking-but-Japanese-written GPS we managed to leave Kanazawa behind. We followed the coast. For endless kilometres it was just a conurbation road squeezed between a row of houses and shops on either side, with surreal speed limits, mostly 40km/h, and with a white line all the way, so no chance of overtaking anywhere. Must be said though that it didn’t stress me out. Don’t know if it’s because of the fear of radars and the invisible police force or because everyone does the same or because it’s my first day. Anyway it was quite relaxing in a sluggish way.
The sun was beautiful, not a cloudy smear in the sky. It was warm and soon we’d be by the sea and the scenic Noto peninsula. Alex elected to come here when a friend of ours mentioned staying in a ryokan that sounded incredibly brilliant. From the website it didn’t just sound it, so she was sold.
Just before leaving the highway we stopped at the Space and UFO museum of the UFO capital of Japan, Hakui. Huge and impressive building with Yuri Gagarin’s real Vostok capsule (apparently) and quite an extensive space exploration collection of exhibits. The UFO section was comparatively mediocre and overall it felt like the building was 10 times too big for what it showed. Anyway it was fun and wacky.
Hakui is at the top of a very long beach after which Noto starts proper, and the low-lying dune-type scenery makes way for a cliffy, rocky and green one. The vegetation changed completely too: at first like a mix between Brittany and côte d’azur, then like alpine forest. And when I say alpine I mean it, we kept seeing carpark dedicated to putting chains on your tyres and we even came across a huge snowplough parked in a corner. Not even a kilometre from the coast the trees looked like you were at least a 1000m up.
With the sun shining the way it did and all the deep green of the trees and blue-green of the sea it was hard to believe this place could get snowed up. But that wasn’t even all.
I read on the Internet that when the Chinese tried to invade Japan twice in the 16th or 17th century, each time with at least 4 times more manpower than the islanders, a storm and a typhoon decimated them to such an extent that they lost or had to retreat with their ponytails between their legs.
When we stopped in a lovely fishing village – the first of the day – the sheer number and scale of sea defences put out to sea and on the coast indirectly showed just what the Chinese had had to deal with: a first line 60 metres out, another at an angle 40 metres in, big rocks and concrete wall on the coast and concrete walls by the houses. Houses, I shall add, whose sea-facing wooden walls never had any opening. In fact, that’s something we’ve found: here harbours are not valued as tourist attractions, there is no eatery or bar, it’s just working places. In France even the smallest coastal hamlet provides something for tourists.
Anyway it was lovely: all wooden houses with black tiles. Few people around, very few cars (is the whole of Japan just crammed into Tokyo or what? So far it’s been such a quiet-deserted country it’s hard to think where the cliché comes from).
Lunch took place in a canteen-type restaurant cliffhanging some 50 metres above a gorgeous cove with bunches of seaweedy rocks, sand and a true painter-like palette of colours. I chose a dish I’d never seen before, a bowl of rice covered in shredded meat mixed with egg. Yummy. To go with that I had miso and spice dried ray slices, which were so beef-jerky-like I had to ask Alex to confirm they smelled of fish. Me wife wasn’t so lucky, her udon soup was a bit disappointing.
A few kilometres up the coast I spotted a lone surfer in a bay. We parked and went down to the beach. There was a hint of wind but the sun was still strong. I was very tempted to go in but thought I’d wait until the next day when we’re staying in that great ryokan overlooking the sea.
I love surfing, and I love watching surfing. It’s a great surrogate. There was just one peak, which started well enough but petered out after two seconds. The guy was doing the same short and tiny wave over and over again. I also thought he was very well padded, with socks and gloves and even a sun-hat-looking hood. I wondered if he was particularly sensitive to the cold, but we later found out the water temperature is actually 10 right now, which isn’t much so I don’t blame the man. Funny, it felt pretty warm (15 maybe?) just looking at it.
Still, I will go in at some point. Can’t miss the chance. I’ve swam in Ouessant in March. I’ve dipped into mountain streams high up in Corsica. I’ve also surfed in January in the North sea when the water was 7 degrees (I had a wetsuit for sure, although a bad one and holes in my crap gloves). Loved it every single time.
It was great seeing this lone man and the sea. The whole ocean for himself. A peak to himself. Surfing in March, in the sun, by yourself. Yeah, that’s the life.
In a way I tend to prefer this kind of surfing. Most of the time you’ll be on your own, no sharing and no priority. Your face is biting, you’ve got to keep paddling to keep away the onset of hypothermia. I remember some incredible sessions on the west coast of Scotland in winter and early spring with crystal-clear water, no one in sight, decent waves, the deep green hills dotted with white sheep all over, and the yellow line of the sand, plus the blue sky. Fantastic.
In fact, in the water it’s fine. The hardest is putting on the wetsuit, especially if it’s windy, and worst of all is taking it off. You’re already cold, yet you have to remove your second skin, the warmish water trapped in runs off and the wind knifes you like a hundred daggers.
It’s been fantastic being by the sea again. Maybe it’s being in Laos. Maybe it’s aging and knowing more precisely who I am and what I like the most more, but yep, the sea is definitely where I belong and want to live. Kyoto and Kanazawa have been great, but being reunited with salty water beats them hands down. The difference between great and greater.
In the match-up between nurture and nature, the latter doesn’t even have a rival.
The sea moves and is never boring. It’s threatening or sweet or perfect or cuddly or welcoming and womb-like, it’s a hundred colours, endless possibilities, surfing, sailing, paddling, snorkeling, fishing, jetskiing, swimming, kite-surfing. There’s the fish, the seaweed, the birds, the storms and x-foot waves, the sound and the fury, the sun reflecting on it or not, the clouds, the days when the horizon is unable to differentiate between sky and sea, the floating corpses, the spawned eggs, the floatsome, the rubbish, the oil leaks, the occasional poo, the people who walk along it, the kids who play in it, the dogs and their stick, the plunging cormorants and boobies.
Give me the sea over every land scenery. Yes mountains are awesome and dramatic, but they are not liquid and don’t dance in the wind. The panorama stays the same even if small details disappear or get altered. The seasons affect them for sure, but on the coast you can have two seasons in a day, rain and sun, wind and stillness, new face, new character, new painting there just in front of you. Every week you know you’ll have seen ten or more new sceneries.
You can’t fly in the air, but you can fly underwater. And on the sea. It’s called surfing.
I must admit, I’m writing this on a footless chair sat on tatamis leading onto a wooden platform jutting out into a raging sea. It’s 22 degrees inside, 6 out, the wind is rattling the windows, the waves are splashing over the very spiky Japanese black rocks scattered into the bay, whitewashing the dark low sky in impressionistic touches. Lines of cormorants keep gliding past our glass-wall. The storm may even get stronger yet Choupette is sitting on the other side of the table reading a book by an Anglo-Japanese writer. Perfection in motion is happening all around me this evening.
Circumstances do affect perception. But my perception of the sea doesn’t. This ryokan, in this particular spot, at this particular time of day and of my life, just makes perfection more perfect.
Lucky, very lucky me. Thank you Choupette.
LAO Confidential 